Chapter 4 - Backsplash

“Thanks for everything yesterday, Ciel.”

“No problem. So how do we do wind magic?”

As promised, I was working on wind magic with my associate. From what I can tell, he was having trouble imagining the concept of wind. I kept my fireball cast while explaining.

“Imagine it like you’re blowing the dust off of something. After you’ve got that, take only your body out of the image.”

“So like… blowing out a candle without your mouth?”

“Yeah, try that.”

I used my fireball to light the candle hanging from the wall and ushered Ciel to try out his idea on that. It took a few tries, but he eventually caught on to chantless wind magic and blasted the whole candle off the holder.

I’m now able to keep the fireball going for almost an hour, also I’ve figured out that I don’t need to run my tanks empty to improve my mana capacity. There’s also a method to replenish your mana with the ambient mana around you that is similar to the meditation I’ve seen in movies from Earth.

So, after we both ran our mana supplies down, we performed, what I’m calling, Mana Breathing. I had Ciel ask Cheyenne about it, and she had no recollection of a similar skill existing.

That means that it’s a high possibility that Ciel and I are the only two people who can use Mana Breathing. It’s not that hard when you actually think about it. Once one understands the feeling of mana, it becomes easy to perceive in the air. All one has to do is draw the mana into their lungs when they breathe and let it diffuse into the body. What would normally take me 4 hours to recover now takes twenty minutes. Using this skill also seems to have an effect on one’s aggregate mana as it steadily increases your maximum once you’ve restored what is missing.

After recovering our mana, Chey popped in to feed me and tell Ciel that lunch was ready. I made baby noises at him, and he let out a laugh as he stood up to leave.

“Thanks for watching Cal while I prepped lunch. He seems to really like you.”

“It’s alright Chey. I actually enjoy it, so it’s not a big deal.” Ciel said with his arms boyishly linking behind his head as he left the room.

“I’ll join you guys after I finish feeding him”

As I ate, she picked up the ‘Introduction to Magic’ book and began reading. Today she covered beginner healing and dual casting. The concept for healing magic was that, depending on the level of the spell, it can go from accelerating the body’s natural regenerative capabilities, to re-growing limbs. Dual casting is just as it sounds, and the ledger of the book makes note of how it is the foundation of compound magic.

The magic spells we sorted into their difficulty levels: Beginner, Intermediate, Advanced, Master, and Peerless. There were various subcategories that they were further sorted into, but apparently, you got different effects depending on what spells you combined. My little blowtorch experiment was actually a compound magic called Flame Lance> using the two spells Wind Stream> and Breath of Fire>. If I could combine water, ice, and fire magic, could I make lightning? As a test, I created a layer of ice dust and heat, surrounded in water vapor I shrunk it to about the size of a marble just above my index finger. It was small and hidden behind the book, so Chey couldn’t really see what was going on. I started agitating the layer of ice to start transferring electrons to the heat layer. I could feel the flow of electricity, so I cut mana to everything but the faint prickly feeling on the tip of my finger. I fed it a little bit more mana and I saw tiny sparks of violet leap across the pad of my finger. It worked! I can cast chantless lightning magic. Unfortunately, Chey adjusted herself at the wrong moment, and I bumped her with my statically charged hand. There was a small ‘snap’ and Chey squeaked.

“Ah! Jeez! Where’d that come from?”

Now that I’d eaten my fill, and with Chey none the wiser, she moved to set me back down in the crib. I clung to her and resisted being set down until she finally caved and brought me out into the den with the rest of the kids.

“Think they’ll try anything today Cal?”

“You know that they will after you defied them yesterday.”

I explained what I’d figured out earlier about compound magic and lightning magic to Ciel, but after his initial shock, no pun intended, he tried and failed to wrap his head around the concept. I’ll just have to show him later.

It had been almost 8 hours, and they hadn't done a thing out of the ordinary, although, Rukh seemed quite uncomfortable. I’ll see what we can do for her if the need arises.

Another hour and a half passed and we were almost fast asleep when the door creaked open. Three kids and two buckets of water. It was obvious what they were planning, but Rukh was absent. Looks like we’re not going to have to use wind magic here. They all crept up to Ciel’s bedside and dumped their buckets over his head, but the water wasn’t coming out. While he feigned sleep, I was keeping the water stationary in the buckets with magic.

When they moved the buckets back to see why nothing happened, I cut the flow of mana and it came splashing down on their heads eliciting a scream unbefitting of a bearded boy. Ciel couldn’t help but break character and burst into laughter at the sweet irony. Not only that, but they couldn’t frame anyone this time, because I’m a baby, and this isn’t their room.

“How come you know magic!?” Thurr said through a matted down ginger facial hair.

“That’s not fair!” Talia screeched indignantly.

“Neither is three on one Talia.”

It was Chey that spoke from the against the door frame. How long has she been standing there?

“I thought it was weird when Ciel lunged at you the other day. He isn’t like that, so to make up for the way I punished him yesterday, I decided to let him get back at you guys as long as it wasn’t too dangerous. Are you satisfied Ciel?”

“I would have rather not done anything, but yeah. It felt good in a way.”

“Don’t get used to it little guy. When you grow up, you’ll realize that revenge is not as sweet as it seems.”

“I’ll keep that in mind Ma’am.”

“…and have you three learned your lesson? You shouldn’t be picking on each other.”

“Okay…” Thurr, Talia, and Ulrich said in unison.

After the incident, everyone returned to their rooms, and Ciel hopped over into my crib once he was sure Elena was asleep.

“We got ‘em, Cal!”

“Sure did! Though, Ciel, what Chey said is true… about revenge. It hardly works out as planned and the price for it can be steep.”

“I’ll take it to heart. Now show me that lightning magic you were talking about, please.”

“Alright, just stop shaking me. You’ll give me Shaken Baby Syndrome.”

“What’s tha- Ah, okay? Please show me!”

Laughing, as quietly as I could, I explained lightning magic to him again and gave him a little zap on the hand. Violet light danced about the room until we both fell asleep.

He never did figure out how to use lightning magic.

I'll try and keep up the pace. 2-3 days at the most should be the longest you guys and gals ever have to wait.

Cheers! Thanks for reading.